Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Testaments episodes 1-3, now streaming on Hulu.
After attending a high tea celebration of The Testaments in New York City, stars Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday have shed their red carpet-worthy dresses and donned matching dark wash jeans and sweaters. They sit on a hotel couch side-by-side and knock knees together as they talk. They giggle at private jokes, finishing each other's sentences. They whisper secrets into the mic that they'd rather their publicists not overhear. Though Infiniti and Halliday are both now twenty-somethings, they move with something of that shared, mysterious language of teenage girls, of close friends.
In Gilead, the setting for a new generation of characters descended from ones in Hulu's 2017 series The Handmaid's Tale, best friends are not allowed. And teenage girls are best kept in the dark about most facts about the world. Their power is so undeniable, however, that it must be carefully controlled.
The first three episodes of The Testaments show us a new side of Gilead, set a few years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale. June Osbourne (Elisabeth Moss) was unable to rescue her eldest daughter from the patriarchal regime; now, Agnes (Infiniti) is coming of age while attending Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) school for the training of young women into fertile, docile wives. She and her best friends Becka (Mattea Conforti), Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard), and Hulda (Isolde Ardies) don’t know any other life than this one—until Toronto newcomer Daisy (Halliday) crashes in with an agenda that might change their lives forever.
Below, Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday chat with Teen Vogue about friendship, periods, and the power and rage of teenage girls.
Chase Infiniti: She was so happy. She's such a happy person and so bubbly. And I was like, oh, she's so cute. Aw.
Lucy Halliday: That's very sweet. Well, technically, technically my first interaction with Chase—
CI: I was late.
LH: She was late. So we had a Zoom call before we ever got to Toronto, but they told us both the wrong time zones. I was on a Zoom call for like 30 minutes being like, "Gosh, she really doesn't want to meet me." I was just sat on my own and then I started emailing people being like—
CI: You said, "Where is Chase?"
LH: Where is she? And then they'd obviously told Chase the wrong time and Chase was in the gym and then came running out like, "I'm sorry, they told me a long time." And so that was my first impression, was that she was clearly a very dedicated athlete.
CI: Since, I've fallen off, I will say.
LH: I was just like, gosh, she's locked in and she doesn't have any outside world because she's so committed to the treadmill.
CI: I hate the treadmill.
LH: I thought she's very interesting and I thought I'm going to get on with this person, because I think we spoke about Disney princesses. I remember you talking about Rapunzel, in Tangled.
CI: Because it was like right after they first announced that they were making that into a movie. And we were like, so if we could be any Disney princess, who would it be?
LH: We're still going to be Disney princesses.
CI: Well, you're definitely going to be Merida. I'm starting her campaign.
LH: And Chase will also be a Disney princess.
CI: Thank you.
LH: And maybe she'll be in Brave as well.
CI: [I’ll be] the little bears. I'll do the triplets.
LH: I definitely was aware of [it], I’ve read a lot of Margaret Atwood growing up and so I'd read both the books. And then actually when [The Testaments] straight away came out [in 2019], my friend brought it and we read it straight away. So, I knew of this world very much before coming into it. And I think you knew about it in high school.
CI: I was 17 when the show first came out. I remember it taking over my high school because everyone had just started watching it. But I was like fresh in high school and I was like, oh my God, like what is this show? This is crazy. So that was like my first interaction with that, was it blowing up at my school.
LH: The first thing I thought of when you said that [is] I have so many memories of being a kid in primary [school] and teachers would be like, ‘oh, I need a big, strong boy to help me.’ And it was like, even at the age of what, five, six, seven, it's like the idea of like your position as a girl, is seen as this weaker or not as valuable member of society, and that's already being projected on you as a child. I was that child and I feel like you were the same [gestures to Chase].
CI: Totally. I was always like the one—
LH: The one that would like, elbow the boys out the way and be like, "I'll do it. I'll be your big strong boy, Ms. whatever your name is."
CI: And trust like, if it was heavy, you would never know by the way. I was never going to let anybody know. I was like, "Bro, it was easy."
LH: I'd rather rip my muscles from my body than like fall, surrender to like projections of patriarchy at a young age.
CI: No, because I definitely did the same thing. … I remember from such a young age, the way that older people would talk about your body. You're literally eight years old and you have somebody talking about the way that you look and being like, "Be mindful of what you eat.” But then like you stood right next to a guy and they're like not treated the same, not that anybody should be treated as such, but to literally be stood next to like your male counterpart in class and you're like, "Why am I only getting this? Why is he not getting any of this?"
LH: It's like hunger as a teenager, like boys are seen as like, "Oh, they need to eat so much because they're growing, the big strong boys are growing." Low-key, I'm growing too.
CI: ‘Hey, it's actually happening to me.’ We're all growing. And I also remember, when I first started my period as a kid, I remember being so scared. I was like, "What's wrong with me?" Because you don't have like, proper, I mean, if you're lucky you have the proper education about what a period is, what that means in that next chapter in your life. But still even with that, it's still terrifying. Every single year at my school they would be like, "This is the female reproductive system." And it was always like, I remember the year that we had that when I just started my period, I was like, "Oh, I'm embarrassed." Because you're sitting with everybody, which I shouldn't have been embarrassed, but I remember that was another point of discussion, where I was, like, too ashamed to even talk about it with my friends. Luckily I'm not like that anymore.
CI: No I'm like, let me be brave. I'm going to walk with it in my hand to the bathroom, and there's nothing to be ashamed of. Taking the shame away from that is something that like, there may be a lot of crazy things that happen in the show, but one of the things that they do is they speak about periods so freely. Although I do not agree with their methods in Gilead, if there was something that people could take from the show, I would love for people to take the openness of speaking about your period, because there's nothing to be ashamed of. Truly.
CI: It was a bit of both, honestly. There was times [during those filming days] where there'd be stuff that you were like, "This is going on outside of work, I'm tired, this might be happening at home." Then it was very freeing to scream for like hours and hours on end. But then there was also times where it was really scary, because you just have all of these girls screaming full force in your face. There were times where it'd be very like freeing and there would be times where it's really terrifying, because the rage that these girls have is so much that's built up, and you really have to pull from the depths to bring it out.
LH: I agree. I think being on the receiving end of it is truly unsettling and it does make you kind of realize the separation between reality and fiction in those moments is so thin, because you're genuinely just experiencing all these people screaming at you, and it's incredibly scary.
I remember a moment when filming the correction scene in episode two where I was in the middle of it all. And the thought crosses your mind of like, well, how far could this go? You're suddenly looking at these people around you, and Daisy's looking at these people around you and it's like, they have the propensity to do this. What else do they have the propensity to do? That's the first inkling of insight into the capability that these girls actually have, and the capability that we all as humans actually have. Because I think it's so easy to kind of separate the aggressors in society and the non-aggressors, but actually when you see scenes like that, you realize, oh, we all are capable of being animalistic and being barbaric. That was an unsettling realization during those moments.
CI: I think she misses the release of the rage because even in, I guess the word that we're in, there's no release of rage that's equivalent to literally just screaming for hours and hours, like these girls can in Gilead. At least when I was recording it, that feeling of release is what I was really envisioning in my mind. There's ways to release rage and release frustrations. But I mean, there's nothing like a good scream, honestly.
CI: In the scene of the guardian's arm getting cut off, I was screaming from a place of shame because I felt like my character was the reason that he was getting his arm cut off. So every time that I was screaming, it was kind of to prove that I didn't… I guess my rage in that scene was really coming from Agnes feeling guilty for something she didn't do, but she felt like she did. Screaming more because she wanted to prove that she didn't technically do anything. You know when you're kind of covering up and you're like, "No, I really didn't do it."
CI: Exactly. So it was kind of a mix of the both, but I think more so like the shame of, I'm kind of the reason that this has happened, even though that's not the truth.
LH: Well, I didn't know until just before we started filming.
CI: You were like, oh, we're sisters.
LH: So I took it quite hard. But I think what I've realized and what, if we distill it down simply, is that actually the mechanics of the relationships have not altered. Daisy and Agnes are very much sisters, whether it be because there's DNA in them that is shared or not, like that doesn't actually alter their relationship. They are two individuals who have been brought together and they are sisters. And also, June is such an important figure in Daisy's life and regardless of whether or not she is biologically her mother, June becomes a maternal figure for Daisy and is, quite frankly, the only, quote unquote, "family" she's got left.
That shared relationship with June is also pivotal in the bond between Agnes and Daisy, despite them not fully being aware of it at the beginning. And I think the mechanics of that relationship is definitely emulating the book. Really the only thing I think that has changed is the DNA lineage, because everything else definitely is followed on … The relationships we have with each other in society are so important to us, and we can form sisterhoods with people who aren't our sisters, and I think that's beautiful.
CI: It made me think I would not be anywhere if it was not for my best friends. I really would be so lost as a person because so many landmarks in my life, the wins have been celebrated with friends, the losses have been celebrated with friends, in between moments have been with them. And they've been there to pick me up. Of course the one thing that Gilead is going to do is try to take away any sense of community. But I cannot imagine a point in my life of not having friends, which I feel very grateful for because I know that's also very rare to have a group of people that you're that close to.
LH: I feel like just as human beings, we have an innate desire to be around other people, and to share experiences and have people support us. We're not singular beings, like we don't thrive on our own. We thrive with communities. And the reason we've survived as human beings is because we've been in groups. We need each other. The banding together of human beings has always been an incredible, if not the most powerful, tool to enact change, or to topple a regime or a problem.
CI: Wait, and do you know what's so funny, one of the first things that we did to hang out was to go get food, but one of the things that me and Rowan did is we saw Beautiful Creatures. That movie, I feel like the bond that those girls have, is like the bond of like a 14-year-old, like that's how strong emotions are, that's how much you love your friends, and that's kind of how I feel the girls are in this situation, because I understand that they kind of have to band together, even though they're told not to.
LH: Yeah.
CI: Yeah. I felt I could conquer the world. Baby was I insecure! But I felt like I could conquer the world. And a lot of that was also because of my friends I had. We felt like, literally the shot of us [in The Testaments] all walking in the hallway with our pinkies.
LH: No, I agree. I just remember being a teenager and going to the, what do you guys call it, the mall? [Infiniti nods.] With my friends and it being like, I felt insane—
CI: —like the coolest person.
LH: I felt like, oh my gosh, I'm riding on a bus and I went to the mall. You can't touch me.
CI: Nothing will be that kind of cool feeling.
LH: That feeling of untouchability, I think only exists at that time in your life because you are slightly delusional to the realities of life, or the fact that you can't do anything. I'd like to believe that I still could do anything, but—
CI: You can do anything.
LH: If I'm being pragmatic, I'm not invincible and I can't do absolutely anything. I'm not going to Mars next Tuesday. Whereas when I was like 14, I would have been like, "If I want to, I'm going to do it. There's just something about the power you have as a teenager, and it's all in your mind, but it's amazing. I wish we preserved more of that as we grew up. I've been told that power comes back when you hit like 45. That's what people tell me. Because you regain it and you realize that actually nothing's that deep.
LH: I don't really know what the metric is because there seems to be a new challenge for someone everywhere at some point or another. And while it's like when one hole gets filled, another hole arises.
CI: More like two holes arise. It's scary out here. The things that are being overturned, the things that are being said about women, and about women's bodies, is just absolutely appalling. And it feels like it's never ending. But I will say, one of the hopeful things about that is, although we have all of these things that are kind of trying to silence women, they're not letting it silence them. They're still going out, they're still using their voice, using whatever power that they have, banding together. Even though the world is so dark and scary right now, people are still banding together and using their voices, and realizing that it's the small acts of rebellion, the small acts of change that actually amount to the bigger change that we want as a collective. But I'm glad to see that that community is not lost.
LH: [Whispering to the mic] I really want to be Merida in live action Brave.
LH: [Normal volume] But also just … I want people to be hopeful about the power of community. What I hope is that people are shocked by it, and I hope people aren't comfortable watching all the scenes. Because so often we are faced with such an abundance of these scenes and this nature in media nowadays, whether it be on the news or in a fictional TV show. With that overabundance comes the propensity to potentially be desensitized to scenes of those natures. We should never be comfortable. We should never be at ease with watching that material unfolding. We should always be shocked and on guard and ready to ignite a fire.
CI: Period.
